BEATRICE – Voters in the Freeman Public School District have soundly rejected a $29.6 million school bond issue.


Gage County Clerk and Election Commissioner Dawn Hill reports the proposal for making improvements and additions to the school in Adams was supported by 298 voters but opposed by 513….in unofficial counting.


Prior to the vote becoming known, Superintendent Dr. Andrew Havelka talked about next steps, without approval of the plan.


"The school board and the district will have to get back to the drawing board. This has been a multi-year planning process to get to this point. I think the district and the school board put together a building project that met the needs and priorities that we had, as a district. We'll regroup and talk through the best steps moving forward and see how, maybe our current plan can be altered or look at a different plan that could meet the needs. I think that's one of the things about taking it to a bond vote...there's always different ways to fund projects, especially in schools, but the school board really felt it was important for the voters to help us to decide and to really gauge where we were at with this project."


Freeman Public Schools has shown steady enrollment growth over the years. "Pretty incremental. We're looking at eight to twelve kids new, each year. Over the last six years, we've seen about sixty new kids...and so, over the past fifteen years, we've seen a thirty percent increase in enrollment. It's slow and steady, but it's happening every year. Over the last five or six years, or at least the six years that I've been here, we've had to maximize our space in different ways...add lockers, change up the way our programming is done, how lunch is done....just with the space that we're seeing shrinking in the building, with the increase in enrollment."


The bond election in the Freeman District was conducted through mail-in voting.